“It seemed so harmless at the time. These people were already sick, so what harm could it do? I never would have guessed that what I did would turn them into such monsters. I started out with a girl. She was 19 – just suffered a severe concussion after she was pushed down one of the stairwells. She could have been pretty, if I had taken away the swelling that was encroaching upon her left eye and upper lip. Her name was Melody, and I knew that she was one of the smarter students in the Psychology department. I also knew that because of the massive bleeding I found in her brain when she was brought into the college’s teaching hospital, she could never fully regain movement of the right side of her body. So I did a bad thing. I did a bad, bad bad, thing. That night I had taken my medication, and instead of going home to bed, I stayed in the lab an extra 15 minutes. I can’t believe that 15 minutes was all it took. 15 minutes isn’t even enough time to make a bowl of pasta. But in those 15 minutes, I changed her life forever. I changed all of our lives forever.
The side effects of my medication are… shall we say harsh. Irrational behavior, insomnia, bleeding from the eyes, nose, and mouth if taken too close together, sleep walking, blackouts, explosive bursts of emotion. They run the gamut, but I figured that the side effects were worth a risk, since the alternative would involve a crushing weight pressing down on my heart like a boulder sliced out of granite.
The first thing I remember when I came out of the blackout was the blood. The amount of blood I had on my hands was unbelievable. As my senses began to reawaken, I heard the rhythmic beeping of a pulse attached to a monitor of someone who was definitely still alive, and judging by the blood, that was an impressive feat. I looked around the otherwise spotless operating room, swallowing my dinner that was pawing its way up my throat as I saw how deeply red the blood contrasted with the sanitary floors. It pooled in spots, clinging to the locks of long, brown hair matted together by my feet. I looked straight below my hands and saw Melody. Melody, with the left side of her skull laying about a foot and a half away from her. Melody, with a clementine-shaped hole in her brain, the ball of gray matter in a petri dish on a small tray to my left. Melody, who was now missing half of what held her memories; of what made her the intelligent, slightly awkward, endearing person she was. My breath was speeding up - I couldn’t believe what I had just done. I know I had fantasized about these experiments before; memory had always fascinated me. But I never imaged that I could have the power to hurt someone like this. Panicking, I took a saline pouch and placed it in the gaping hole in Melody’s brain. Running on autopilot and adrenaline, I placed the piece of bone back in place and sewed Melody’s scalp over her skull. I didn’t know what do. I had essentially just murdered a perfectly functional young woman. She could have had such a bright future. She could have been Our Answer. The first thing I had done upon entering medical school was to take an oath: do no harm.

I took her to my apartment just down the block. It was 2:00 in the morning, so we were shrouded in darkness. Just me, Melody, and the night. It was the longest walk I had ever taken, and then suddenly--home. I wheeled her into my living room. Given the different hypothesis I had read, I feared what I had just created. I zip-tied her hands and feet to the cold, stainless steel bars on her hospital gurney. I took a moment to check her pulse – it was still plugging along like a loaded cargo train struggling up a mountain; steady, slow, but strong. Breathing a sigh of relief, I collapsed on the couch behind the bed and fell into a deep, dark sleep.

I will never forget the sound that wrenched me from my dreamless sleep. It was as ear splitting and blood curtailing. It was as if her heart was being torn out of her body; as if I had punctured her soul. I shot up out of bed with such ferocity that I nearly passed out. I didn’t need to stand up to see. She was screaming, jaw unhinged, the most animalistic howl that I had ever heard leaping from her throat. Fingers clawing at the zip ties, every muscle in her body was rigid, fighting as if they were at war with her ligaments and bones themselves. But her eyes, her eyes are something that will never leave me. She was sobbing, tears streaming down her face faster then rain falls from the sky on the darkest of days. Only it wasn’t the normal mixture of saline and salt that fell from her tear ducts.
It was blood.
She had trails of blood pouring from her sockets, making her look inhuman.
They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and if this is the case, then I saw straight into hell that day.
I had created a monster.
And I would create more.”